The Rise and Fall of Progressive Dissent
http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=9011
by Randy Shaw
Mar. 22‚ 2011
The remarkable new documentary on 1960's folksinger and activist Phil
Ochs offers a striking contrast between 1960's activists and those of
2011. The former engaged in massive anti-war protests against
Democratic President Lyndon Johnson – despite his historic enactment
of federal civil rights laws, Medicare, and the War on Poverty. Yet
Barack Obama's endless, $2 billion a week war in Afghanistan, and his
capitulation to Wall Street proceeds without a peep. Even well-known
musicians involved with social justice causes have avoided playing at
protests against Obama's policies. For all of their sometimes naïve
idealism, 1960's activists understood that "liberals" also wage
unnecessary wars and weaken social and economic justice. But today's
activists are so fearful of empowering the right wing that they give
Democrat Obama a pass on almost every issue, and then complain that
he ignores progressive concerns.
I never heard of Phil Ochs when growing up, and only learned of his
songs when my wife purchased a box set of his recordings about a
decade ago. But even if you have never heard an Ochs song, the new
film about him is a powerful testament to the change in social change
activism since the 1960's.
Fear of the Right Wing
It could be said that activists felt comfortable bashing Democrat
Johnson, because the only Republican President they had lived under
was moderate Dwight Eisenhower. Yet progressives protested Jimmy
Carter after experiencing Richard Nixon's presidency, and also
engaged in massive resistance – recall the Battle of Seattle in 1999
– against many of Democrat Bill Clinton's policies.
But either due to the legacy of George W. Bush or increased political
conformity, fears of the right wing has stifled progressive dissent
in the United States. Activists ignore Barack Obama's actions in
boosting Wall Street and the military industrial complex, when they
would have been out in the streets protesting similar actions under
previous Democratic Presidents.
One key difference between then and now is that few 1960's activists
were concerned about maintaining friendly relations with Democratic
Party politicians. The Ochs film reminds that 1960's activist leaders
were trying to change the system, not find a job or place for them in
the Establishment.
Today, one-time political activist outsiders like MoveOn.org and
Democracy for America operate like left branches of the Democratic
Party, not as independent progressive forces. Nearly all of their
daily emails attack Republicans, with no major protests or actions
against Obama for an endless war in Afghanistan whose cost comes at
the expense of teacher layoffs and the slashing of state and federal
human services spending.
"Clarifying" Activism
Tom Hayden, who has provided brilliant and visionary social analysis
of the American left for nearly fifty years, is among those
interviewed in the Ochs film. He makes the point that the 60's
anti-war movement began with a rush of idealism, which then spun off
in two directions as the protesters felt they were having little
impact (a mistaken conclusion, as shown by Tom Wells in his classic,
The War Within: America's Battle Over Vietnam).
One direction led activists to the militant self-destructiveness
embodied by the Weather Underground. But others moved toward what
Hayden describes as a "clarification" about the nature of United
States society, and its susceptibility to meaningful change.
This clarification left many concluding that overthrowing the status
quo was actually a pipe dream, and that greater opportunities to
improve people's lives could be achieved either through local
activism and/or other less "national" causes.
Today's progressive activists and groups understand Obama's
betrayals, but by limiting protests to Republicans they confuse –
rather than clarify – the dynamics of national power. The
Oscar-winning documentary, Inside Job, provided such clarification,
but its message has not altered the "only bash Republicans" strategy.
"Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune" is less a story about a singer and
more a tale of the changing fortunes of United States activism. It is
hard for me to recall a more thought provoking film.
.
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